New Jersey Regulators Issue Warning to Poker Affiliates

State of New Jersey gaming officials recently sent out warning letters to six major poker affiliates advising them to remove links to unauthorized poker sites from their online properties.

The action by state officials is a clear indication that NJ will be taking a hard line when it comes to unregulated, unlicensed offshore gambling sites.

Affiliate sites that received the letter include:

CardsChat.com

PokerSource.com

RakeBrain.com

Pokersites.com

RaketheRake.com

One Unnamed Site

While it’s not clear why Garden State regulators took so long to crack down on the grey market links, the wording of the warning made it clear that they’re very serious about the crackdown:

This letter shall serve as official notice that your website, by offering links to sites which may be offering unauthorized online gaming, may be promoting activity that is contrary to New Jersey and federal law. The state of New Jersey reserves the right to pursue appropriate civil or criminal sanctions against you if you fail to take the requested actions.

In a report published on PerformanceInsider.com, Department of Gaming Enforcement spokesperson Kerry Langan said:

We believe this may either taint legitimate sites by associating them with the illegal ones, and conversely may lend the appearance that these illegal sites are affiliated with authorized sites.

In short, DGE officials do not want the good name of NJ iGaming tainted by any association with unlicensed gambling. How big an impact this has on poker affiliates, who may not be able to afford to limit themselves to just a few regulated programs, remains to be seen.

Sounds like you may be fine if you do not list both the licensed and licensed rooms on the same website. I’ll try not to mention any of the inferior but licensed rooms on my sites any more. They don’t appreciate the free press I guess.

That would be my guess as well. They don’t want New Jersey licensed operators to be promoted next to unregulated properties, which would obviously be targeting New Jersey residents. The obvious solution would be to remove the licensed operators, any reference to NJ, and just promote the unregulated operators to players where its legal.